The Bugs Have Started Again

This strip exemplifies the newspaper comic's visual grammar: sequential panels following a single gag across six frames, dialogue in speech balloons, and recurring character types. Two men encounter each other with escalating comic tension—one warns the other of bedbugs, the conversation turns to roasting, and the punchline lands in physical comedy. The heavy black linework and simplified figures were standard to early newspaper comics, which emerged from editorial cartoons and vaudeville traditions. By 1909, daily and Sunday strips had become fixtures in American papers, establishing the panel-based narrative form that would define comic books for decades to come.